In last week’s survey of 10 new Labour MPs on the future of the party (“Let’s stick together”, In Focus, last week, page 22), an unfortunate editing error led to the first paragraph of Nick Thomas-Symonds’s piece becoming attached to the last paragraph of Wes Streeting’s contribution. Apologies.
In “Letwin: inner-city youth ‘more alien than serfs’ ” (News, last week, page 4), we said Downing Street files from 1985 show that a paper co-written by Oliver Letwin advised the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, against setting up a programme to combat inner-city problems because it would only “subsidise Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops”. We also said the same document predicted that new, black entrepreneurs “will set up in the disco and drugs trade”. Although Mr Letwin did co-write a memo on help for black entrepreneurs, the Rastafarian comment was made in a different memo that he did not co-write.
The Irish tricolour is not green, white and gold, as we had it in “Ireland prepares to mark Easter Rising” (News, last week, page 7) but green, white and orange – green for the nationalist tradition, orange for the unionist tradition and white for peace.
Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers’ Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk or telephone 020-3353 4656
